colour

COLOUR IS WAITING

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

And still we will come to lick the honey
from the purple petal and still we will come
to root out the weeds of worthlessness in gardens
where others eat up all that is beautiful. Time turns
and we, in turn, follow its path, suns set and the moon
shows us its song, hold hands and then release,
hold hope and then move on, we only own the moment.
Mothers may still hand over their hearts to other mothers
waiting to be wanted, fathers may rise to be fearless
or choke on the root of their own fear, those black-cloaked
women pouring water from windows onto withered plants,
who’ve buried their living bodies in a bitterness
for all that life has lynched from them, will continue
to cry as flames flicker out along the Seine,
like their memory, revealing structure still standing
but soul no longer settled. They will still pour
their buckets of tears down the aging walls of a city
that cannot see beyond its past. If we cannot catch colour
then we too will be cremated in the concrete. But black
is only shadow until it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom. Eat the storms,
Mother said, remember? Boil the beds of bitter blackness
until the dream rips through the rain and translucent
turns them lighter, brighter. And still we will come
to that lake where language lingers, still we will sink
beneath its depths to slip ourselves from the reflections
we have once worn and now outgrown. Still we will sink
kisses onto our starved lips and still come back for more
after love catches hold of kisses cradled on other lips.
Catch the colour, catch the kisses, catch the life
racing by in taxis, on trains with crimson carriages
connecting moments waiting to be made magical.
The starry night can be a bright light waiting for us
to paint it. Behold how much there is to love, to let go of,
to learn from. Let us be the design and not just the destruction.
Eat the storms, she said, taste the refreshment in the bright
blue rain. Colour is waiting just beyond the clouds.

  EBA745D1-36E2-45EB-B84C-61914EAEAF30

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

30th and final poem for National Poetry Writing Month 2019

SHADES OF BLUE FEATURED ON EXPLORING COLOUR

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

Today my poem Shades of Blue is featured on Exploring Colour, the beautiful and inspiring blog from Liz Cowburn; https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/shades-of-blue-2/

It is featured alongside a powerful poem of loss and being found from Kay McKenzie Cooke entitled Found. Kay’s blog is https://kaymckenziecooke.com/

and a stunning water-colour painting of blue irises by Jodi McKinney from the blog https://lifeinbetween.me/

Liz has curated this little collection exploring the positivity of the colour blue while sharing two sides of the adoption spectrum with the help of photography from her husband Nigel.

Please take a moment to visit the blogs and explore the beauty and colour of painting, pictures, poetry and precious voices…

 

Dami X

 

THE IRISES OF OUR EYES

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

Crazed caught on canvas, caught in colour,
thought tempered in sweeping strokes,
we can be carried away in seas of grass,
coral greens awash in the garden,
catch the canvas before its fold finds favour
in other fields the mind has yet to fathom,
we can be crazy. Quick comes the crow
upon the harvest, bleak beacons,
art is not always to be understood
nor the artist always allowed the freedom
to express; we want cream walls
and canvases to comfort the canapé,
expression doesn’t always please the pattern.
Crazed comes to life on canvas, see
how he called to us; potato faced pickers
pealing in broken browns, aged in ochre,
acrylic is not a cover up, the canvas is not
a vision of vanity, even the sun flowers wilt
before the irises of our eyes. Fields, fields,
far flung fields of amber grain, far from home,
far from fame, trying to catch the elusive light
bearing down on the bails of honeyed hay
before the black wings hanging in the horizon,
painting eyes, other’s eyes for us to learn from,
to weep for the long loss after the colour
no longer connects. Quick, catch creation
before it catches fire, before it ricochets in a bed
in Anvers-sur-Oise, electricity only illuminated
the intensity, insanity is not always sedated
after the shock. Colour cannot be captured
by constraints in a brass bed with brown
leather straps. Colour is conveyed on canvas,
in connections, in the bend the brush makes
to blend, in the waves the stars twist
into that night sky, in the lines of letters
to brothers who know us to be better
than the light sometimes allows.
He was a captive to the colour,
a captive to the canvas, to the voices
dark and distant, cut it off and the voices
still come a calling. Capture colour
before they caption you as crazy.

     

All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

34th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

OCHRE DANCING

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Porcelain
plant pot
plots
the delicious decay
of decadence
once eyed as ochre
dancing
next to dandelions
in the dawn’s dew.
Pretty
painted picture
of plants
in a porcelain pot
plays with the presence
of past
and present
under the preservation
of pressed paint.
Gold garnered
by the grace
of the sun,
amber’s earthiness
on route
to autumn’s rust,
careful creation
caught
on canvas,
a fragile folly
frozen
before
the fall.

   

Words and oil painting by Damien B, Donnelly

23rd poem for National Poetry Writing Month

BLACK IS ONLY SHADOW

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Winter has grey wings,
feathers of sodden soot
that come from concrete clouds
too dense to discern any light beyond.
Winter spawns grey wings
but spring is an architect of possibility
by a canal of colour that sweeps in
after the fright of the frost
and baths us in a blithe breath
that blows across a chest once in chains.

Round the red bricked bridge we ride,
each pedal pushing past the storms
that rained rivers through our winters.
Follow the river, she sings,
seasons are short but the earth is a sphere
turning towards the light,
dark doors open often into hopeful,
the river recalls its route
regardless of the water,
blue can be a bright beacon to bathe in,
black is only shadow
before it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom.

We can be the water or the bridge,
the natural path or the paved plot,
the route is bright beyond the chains,
the greyest night is but a sleep behind
the colours waiting beyond the bend.

    

All words and water colours by Damien B. Donnelly

22nd poem for National Poetry Writing Month

GOLD TAINTED GRASSES

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Corners come crawling from the fine folds
of memory when the lavender was long
with laughter beyond the bridge
where the lazy water twisted her sky’s blues
through rough rock and tufts of gold tainted
grasses that I captured on canvas
and you kept in glass cases crowded
with curated curiosities and empty wine bottles.
We were in your Queen’s country; Balmoral
and all her bounty without a breath
of any Brexit. They had a tin can
of baked beans in her local store
and a couple of packets of butter biscuits
in a coating of plastic tartan and I wondered
who had the midnight nibbles
after the summer’s sun had settled
over the north that so wanted to snap
from the south. We’d sat in a church
with the Ma’am herself and all the family,
a tiny little thing (both monument
and monarch) cut into ragged rock
on the turn of a heather hewn hill, clinging
to its own existence like the family
and the faith and the kingdom. Later,
we gathered with giggles in a glen
as little Miss Sydney crippled us
with comedy and the Ling heathers
bloomed in the buoyancy of her laughter,
a daughter of the Commonwealth
now no longer common. All things come
and go, like the scent of cut lavender,
culled and so peacefully plain, its colour
now lighter, now longer able to be amethyst.
Memory too folds and fades like the colour
of each encounter, like the bloom and
the border, the lavender and the laughter,
the freedom and the procession, the family
and the faith, the country and the conqueror,
like all entrances and all their unexpected exits.

   

All words and water colour by Damien B. Donnelly

21st poem for National Poetry Writing Month

CATCH THE COLOUR

/ deuxiemepeau / 23 Comments

 

Sun sets and then rises and in between
we kiss, catch the kisses that come
upon the current, catch the kiss,
the continent is not always ours
to conquer. Tides come and tides
retreat, touch is temporary, flesh
is polished pink below the sensuous sky
but falls from fold like sands in the
glass that hoards the hours, like clouds
that can never be caged. Sun sets
and we blaze our orange blossoms
into passing nights, the night’s gale
calls of connections in the passing,
passion is precious until it too passes.
Sun rises and then falls, catch light;
catch the fire before it drowns
on the water, catch the colours to paint
the coming of the grey, to keep afloat
until the next kiss. Catch colour,
catch kisses before the sun sets,
let worry waste upon the wave,
tomorrow’s light will be blue enough.

    

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

20th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

LIFE IN TECHNICOLOR

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

A caress of candy apple red
on a Hong Kong carriageway
of Persian blue busses
and yellowing white stripes,
a notably normal night
without a star in sight
where nothing really happened
except for a sweetening fold,
caught by a camera
and time passing
and that bus in blue going by,
the lives of two commuters
entwining their way through
their lanes of life in technicolor.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

GOLDEN HAZE

/ deuxiemepeau / 16 Comments

 
Slow comes the morning,
eyes still dazzled by the delicate stars
now off trailing dust across the universe
as if plotting tracks to tempt us
further than the stubborn stance
of our single spotlights
and I wonder how far you got
as I sit here, in the silence
of this slowly waking morning light
casting shadows on the single form
in this too big room with no door
large enough to climb through.
We considered setting sails
on cotton clouds once, long ago,
in a corner of this concrete jungle,
a single streetlamp casting courage
onto our concerns of cutting free
like a jazz break from the base,
of burning our own trails of glorious starlight
across the deafening daylight.
I am breath that still can bleed now,
here now, far from that corner we once
we painted dreams on, trying to force
the foot to slow the speed of this time burning
while you; already taken to the dust,
now a speckled starlight
cutting your own groove
into an orbit I cannot observe
while tossing remembrances
down from the night sky
that fall and flitter
above the dizzying distraction
of this golden haze of mourning light,
still coming on slow.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

17th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

THE GREYING MIST OF MEMORY

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

I’d never heard the call of the green
though my eyes caress it
in a certain light
and so many walls I’ve covered
with that same colour
to curate a comfort from the cold.
I’d never heard it, till now,
till the windows stopped
keeping out that chill.
Blue, I never found blue cold,
on the contrary, I see the sky
coming down to caress the seas I’ve crossed
in a coating of calm encouragement,
even in the snow, in the moonlight,
that blue light connecting its contours
like icy jazz notes on a single saxophone
on a smoky soirée, in a time the greying mist
of memory hasn’t quite drained.
Blue never, but white; chills.
I had red walls once and, at the time,
thought them a tribute
to my, as yet unexposed, pride.
I since recall them
as something more melancholy;
a call in themselves,
but in my child’s mind
I was scarlet conquering
on Sunday afternoons
on the inside of the rain
as oldies played across the tv screen
long before I even heard the song
from the singer in blue.
Blue, songs are like…
songs are like souls catching flight,
in my mind they are shadows;
black and white blurs,
but in the air they take flight
like cormorants of colour
over those green lands
my eyes are seeing
with more interest than ever before
as I come to drink again from that case.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

14th poem for NaPoWriMo